The UK is wasting wind energy, and why it is increasing your bills.

Exile28

I've just read a really good article on why costs are not coming down despite using more wind power. Apparently The UK is wasting a lot of wind power

On the windiest days, we deliberately capped the amount of power our turbines were producing, reducing the total amount generated by 6%. In fact, it’s worse than that: not only did we turn off our turbines, but we paid the owners of windfarms to turn them off. This is called curtailment.

In 2022, a year characterized by extraordinary hikes in energy prices for consumers, we spent £215m on turning windfarms off, and then another £717m turning on gas power plants to replace the lost wind power. In the process, we emitted an extra 1.5 million tonnes of CO2.

Most windfarms are either in Scotland, or in the sea. That’s because:

1. England banned the construction of windfarms onshore in 2015 (a move which looks likely to be reversed)
2. Scotland, and the sea, are very windy
3. There are relatively few people living in Scotland (or the sea), which makes it easier to get planning permissions without getting snarled up in NIMBYism

However, as you might expect, most of the UK’s electricity consumption is not in Scotland (or the sea). It’s concentrated in the South East of England, where most of the people are.

This poses a problem, because moving electricity long distances is expensive. You need big cables, which are serious bits of kit – the last large one we put in cost £1.2 bn. At times, we just have more windpower than we have cables to transmit it. The particular hotspot for this problem is the B6 boundary: the bottleneck for electricity from Scotland to flow to England.

When we’re generating more windpower than we can transmit, the National Grid pays the windfarms to turn off, and pays a (typically gas powered) alternative generator, closer to the demand, to turn on. Consumers end up effectively paying three times for the power they’re getting: the original payment to the windfarm for the electricity, the payment to turn off, and then the payment to the alternative generator.

At times the UK was wasting as much wind power as we were using.

On Christmas day, we spent £9.2m on curtailment costs, curtailing a total of 76.18 GWh. That’s enough electricity to power ~11’000 households for a year.

Electricity prices – which are the main way that incentives are communicated to market participants – are completely location independent in the UK. This means that a generator with a wind farm on the Outer Hebrides can sell a MWh to an electricity supplier with customers in Surrey, and neither of them has to worry about how the energy gets from point A to point B 3. Conversely, a wind turbine in Surrey sees no price benefit from selling its MWh to a customer next door, despite the obvious efficiency benefits.

If generators and consumers aren’t worrying about where energy is flowing from and to, who is? The messy, geographically nuanced reality of ensuring enough electrons are flowing to each consumer becomes the problem of the National Grid Energy System Operator (NGESO), who have the final responsibility for keeping the lights on.

It is another example of another massive government failure and that's before you even get into the supplier company mess.

As with many of the challenges this country faces I can't see this going away anytime soon.

Mstty

It will undoubtedly all blow over, it'll be gone with the wind.

What's the solution and what are the costs? 

Astria

I remember when people were saying that wind farms were an eyesore on the countryside, were killing too many birds, and wanted alternative energy solutions. Now that energy costs have skyrocketed, people have started to like them again.

Mstty

Astria said:

I remember when people were saying that wind farms were an eyesore on the countryside, were killing too many birds, and wanted alternative energy solutions. Now that energy costs have skyrocketed, people have started to like them again.

I still wouldn't want one on my doorstep. Happy to pay extra for the views.

Happy to have a nuclear power station nearby, easier on the eye.

Alnat1

I'd be happy to watch one turning and think - ooh my leccy will be cheaper today.

JGreenwood

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.

The problem seems to be poor planning, these initiatives seem good in principle but aren't always feasible. It's things like the push for electric cars, but then, is there enough electric and how do you set up a sufficient amount of charging ports? Plus what's the environmental impact of disposal of car batteries, etc?

There's too many complications, and sometimes these initiatives move boldly forwards without considering the potential issues.

CanNeverThinkOfAUsername

I wish i had a wind farm near me. I would love to look at it on a morning while having my cuppa tea and watching the blades go round

Alnat1

It's all the Agile customers who like turbines 

CanNeverThinkOfAUsername

Alnat1 said:

It's all the Agile customers who like turbines 

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

Petriix

I'm not in agreement with Rishi Sunak's plans to make people study maths for longer, but it may be helpful in this case. 6% is not most.

Qyburn

Alnat1 said:

I'd be happy to watch one turning and think - ooh my leccy will be cheaper today.

That would cheer you up while you're kept awake all night. Or woken at dawn by shadow flicker. They are not nice neighbours.